I'm a female 24 year old DC permanent intern. You name it and I've probably interned it. I'm also a graduate student in DC.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Ann Coulter on dating in Washington, DC

From George Magazine...By Ann Coulter

The really appropriate setting for writing an article about dating inthe nation's capital would be home alone in my D.C. apartment on a Saturdaynight. By chance, however, I'll be in New York this weekend. By chance,I've been in New York every weekend for approximately the previous 147 weeks,give or take a few shuttle mishaps. But since all my stuff is in D.C., Ido have to drop in occasionally. Consequently, I've become a minorauthority on dating in Washington. Maybe not on dating exactly but one crucialelement of any date: "the ask."

Boys in Washington don't know how to ask for a date. What they do is tryto trick you into asking them for a date. They say, "I know you're reallybusy, so call me when you'd like to go out to dinner" or "Call me when you'reback in Washington" or, my favorite, "Are we ever going to get together?"What are you supposed to say to such completely insane things? I've neverfigured that out, which is why these conversations tend to end in hostilesilences.

"Call me when you'd like to go out for dinner" isn't asking for a date;it's asking me to ask you for a date. For male readers in Washington, askingfor a date entails these indispensable components: an express request for afemale's company on a particular date for a specific activity. Oh yes,and the request has to be made to the female herself.

Roughly once every two weeks, I get a woman on my answering machineasking me if I'd like to go out with some dumb-ass male friend of hers who'stoo afraid to call me himself. (For those outside Washington, I'm notkidding.)

This isn't a screeching, hate-filled, anti-male screed. It Is ascreeching, hate-filled anti-D.C. screed. There's no large sociological point aboutrelations between the sexes here. It's Washington. I know this, becausewhile D.C. males are on my answering machine with vague announcementsthat they've called, I still get messages from boys in New York saying, forexample, "I have tickets for the opera next Friday. Would you like togo?"

Males in every other city know how to ask for dates. So it's not me;it's not feminism; it's not the millennium. I've begun aggressively inquiringof every female I come across:"Pardon, but have you noticed that boys inWashington don't know how to ask for dates?" The consistent response hasbeen a raft of stinging denunciations too numerous to catalog here. If Iwere asking something preposterous, like "Say, have you noticed all thealligator carcasses in the street lately?" I wouldn't be getting suchemphatic affirmations every time.

Recently, I asked a female on Capitol Hill about this, and she saidright off, as if I were a psychic, "We were just talking about that onSaturday night!" She had been discussing it in a mixed crowd and reported thatthe boys began hectoring the girls-C'mon, this is the twentieth century.You're modern women; you can ask for dates. I asked her if waiting for women toask them for dates had worked for these guys. No, they just sit around withfriends, year after year, waiting for their theory to play out. This isalso how government programs are conceived and tested, so it makes perfectsense that only in Washington are males still waiting for action on the no-askdating plan.

In fact, the incapacity of the D.C. male to request a date is theperfect synecdoche for this whole pathetic city. There is a total absence ofnormal civilized conventions in Washington. The customer is always wrong, thecabs don't have meters, and complete strangers ask for the sports section ofyour paper on the subway. In every real job I've ever had, it was aconvention for the boss to give a Christmas gift to the people who work for him. InWashington, minimum-wage staffers take up a collection to buy Christmasgifts for the senator and chief of staff.

There's a reason boys asking for dates is a convention of civilizedsociety. First, someone's going to have to face rejection. It may as well be theaggressive, testosterone-pumping, hunter male. Speaking for myself, I'lltake 69 cents on the dollar (or whatever the current feminist myth is)never to have to ask for a date. But the whole point of this convention is toreduce, if not eliminate, the need for rejection anyway. The entiredating system runs on implicit understandings. If the hunter male doesn't likea girl, he doesn't call. That's the end of it. If the hunted femaledoesn't like the boy, she's unavailable without a good excuse three times in arow. No explanations, no hurt feelings. When you start fiddling with acenturies-old system like this, you're just asking for trouble. If youcan't operate by covert signals, you're going to get horrifying,misery-inducing explanations.

Second, no one makes any money in D.C. From this, I deducethat young men should make loads of money. There may be grating aspectsto 20- and 30-somethings earning kazillion-dollar bonuses, but at leastwealth gives them the self-confidence to ask for a date. Third, TV is realityin Washington. Restaurants close at 8 P.M. A few really, really late-nightplaces stay open until nine or 10, but even these sometimes closeunexpectedly at eight. (In addition to being always wrong, the customeris an impediment to the serious business of Washington, which is watchingTV.) So everyone is home watching TV all the time. Like many New Yorkers, Inever had a TV, but I got one when I moved to Washington. The peculiar thingabout watching TV after a long lapse is that you are actually aware of TVchanging your perception of reality. I've started subconsciously associating menof the cloth with murderous Nazi conspiracies, for example. I've got amillion more television-induced perception shifts, but the relevant one here isthat females are invariably the sexual aggressors on TV. The typical romanticoverture on the small screen is boy meets girl, girl drops dress.

13 Comments:

(a) Ann Coulter, despite her numerous, abundant personality flaws, is arguably attractive. What troubles me is all the ugly or dull DC girls who will use this article to blame their inability to get a date on "DC guys." (b) Ann may be right, but circulating this will no doubt serve to perpetuate man-hating -- the exact thing that has led to the problem of guys not asking girls out.(c) I'm a DC guy, and I don't often ask girls out, because I don't often find one interesting and attractive enough that's worth it in this town. I'm sure if I was surrounded by aspiring models, actresses and artists like in NYC, I'd ask girls out all the time. But let's face it - aspiring career professionals - i.e., the girls that live and work in DC - tend to be more likely to be man-fearing, dogmatically-feminist blocks of ice. Once you get out of the whole Capitol Hill-K Street-Law Firm world - I suggest students and waitresses - girls can actually be worth asking out. But as for the rest of you dress-alike, business casual, incredibly dull DC girls - don't hold your breath for a date until you (a) stop taking yourself so seriously and (b) learn to develop an iota of self-expression.(d) George Magazine hasn't been printed since March of 2001, this article is hardly timely.-DC Guy

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